1 The Systems to be Harmonized.
I THE SYSTEMS TO BE HARMONIZED Let us remember, in the beginning, that the object of the present study is not to reduce the attitude-types, the pretended "characters," to a small number of elements, a task but too easy ! On the contrary, it is a question of multiplying them, and at the same time, as I have already explained, of examining the analysis of each one of them ; of each one of us. Every one of these types, I have said, is in reality but one face, one ATTITUDE of the human Soul, and that soul remains whole and identical in all men; there is not one of them who could not, originally, present all these attitudes, pass from one to another of them, exhibit all their gestures. But heredity, education, example and social custom with its false duties have ankylosed in us a much reduced number of these attitudes. It is at this point that Kant saw but four possibilities for all humanity ; four, not one more, not one less; four, not even combinable among themselves to engender another! There are but four, he affirms in his absolutism, and they can no more mingle "than the four forms of the syllogism." To these four irreconcilable aspects of humanity he gives the ancient name of "temperaments," but evidently without retaining its etymological sense (TEMPERAMENTUM, equilibrium). It must be recognized that the philosophers and classifiers, more or less consciously, always return to this antique medical theory. The majority admit, like their founders, that the four temperaments mingle, two by two or three by three, in variable proportions, like the famous "humours" from which they were drawn. Assuredly, it is a strange spectacle to see thus surviving in psychology the consequences of a classification so long obsolete in physiology! And it is most amusing to see certain writers taking as great pains to justify all this in the name of Science (with Fouillee) as others (such as Paulhan and Ribot) take to avoid it, seeking to abandon and leave behind them the "unstable," the ill-balanced, the "amorphous" etc., which is to say, the major part of mankind. It is curious too that the former should find themselves to be the idealists, and that the positivism of the latter should seek support in the classic distribution of mental faculties: will, emotion, intelligence. Observe that their "Obstinate" types recall strangely the ancient Bilious (which included the Ambitious, the Dominating, etc.) and their "Emo tionals" the Nervous. Their "Inconsistents" comprising chiefly, I am afraid, the adversaries of their vaunted Systems, it only remains to pick from among their stragglers the "Amorphous" and the "Unstable" to discover in them our traditional Lymphatic and Sanguine! As to M. Fouillee, who does not pretend to break so violently with the past, he defines the Sanguine as "Sensitive, of prompt reaction" and the Nervous as "Sensitive, of intense reaction;" the Bilious or Choleric as "Active, of prompt and intense reaction" and the unfortunate Lymphatic or Phlegmatic as "Active, of slow and not intense reaction"; definitions more scientific than exact, to tell the truth, but so much the more appropriate for the contemporary reader.